Mark Ovland: Talk - Rubin's Vase & the Drama of Life

(Gaia House)

(Cambridge Insight Meditation Center)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha taught four guidelines for Wise Speech (as a core aspect of ethical practice): truthfulness, helpfulness, care and kindness, and appropriateness (especially good timing). We explore the first guideline, partly in connection with the other three guidelines, in four dimensions of practice. First and most basically, we explore how we practice with truthfulness in our individual practice with others. Secondly, we look at how truthfulness is also a central ethical guideline in our communities, organizations, and societies, making possible trust and safety; yet often this guideline is not followed. Thirdly, we look at our contemporary society in terms of truthfulness and the lack of truthfulness. Fourthly, we ask how we might respond, as part of our ethical practice, to develop more truthfulness in the society: What can help? The talk is followed by discussion.

(Flagstaff Insight Meditation Community)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Tisarana Buddhist Monastery) Q& A session given after Sunday talk on 06 Sep 26

(Tisarana Buddhist Monastery) The theme of this Sunday talk, the Four Noble truths. Buddhist traditions may vary in many ways, but the one common teaching in each one is this one. Is there a wellbeing that is not relative to situations? That remains unchanged. This was the Buddha's realisation. And the core of the teaching above. It allows one to take responsibility for ones discontent.To really understand how things work.

(Tisarana Buddhist Monastery) The theme of this Sunday talk, the Four Noble truths. Buddhist traditions may vary in many ways, but the one common teaching in each one is this one. Is there a wellbeing that is not relative to situations? That remains unchanged. This was the Buddha's realisation. And the core of the teaching above. It allows one to take responsibility for ones discontent.To really understand how things work.

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) The Buddha famously said, "I teach dukkha [suffering or reactivity or a sense of unsatisfactoriness] and the cessation of dukkha.” We explore this core teaching as it is expressed in the Four Noble Truths and the teachings of the Two Arrows and Dependent Origination, including ways that it can be confusing. We suggest ways to understand and implement this teaching both in formal meditation and in everyday life. (See document 328 below, on "Four Meanings of Dukkha, and Contact to Grasping in the Dependent Origination Model.")

(Cambridge Insight Meditation Center)